


Jekyll Is Hyde

by meefling



Category: The Glass Scientists (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Crisis, Mental Breakdown, Midlife Crisis???, Pep Talk, Self Care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-19 09:36:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22742458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meefling/pseuds/meefling
Summary: Ever since that fateful night, Hyde has been enjoying the hell out of his new life, always happy to leave his former titles and his former self behind.But one night, before he can even think about his nightly activities, he looks, truly looks, at Henry Jekyll in the mirror.And for the first time, he misses who he used to be.
Relationships: Dr. Henry Jekyll & Mr. Edward Hyde
Comments: 1
Kudos: 99





	Jekyll Is Hyde

Something strange happened when he took control that night. It was typical that as soon as the transformation high left him, Edward Hyde would dress in his own clothing, and rush out the door as if the building was on fire, so he could start his evening of Sin And Debauchery. It was strange and unusual that after the high left, Hyde found himself standing, swaying slightly, and looking into the mirror at Henry Jekyll.

Jekyll himself was feeling a bit nervous, those luminous green eyes were always twitching around, Hyde had wandering eyes, so why was he so fixated? Nevertheless, why was he hyper-focused on Jekyll, of all the people? Hyde frowned.

“Move.” He mumbled, stepping towards the standing mirror. Jekyll started, then blinked and pointed to himself.

“What, me??” He asked, dumbly.

Hyde nodded, numbly.

Jekyll dissipated, confusedly.

Hyde stepped closer yet to the mirror, his own reflection being the only thing he saw now. Jekyll took up temporary residence in the reflection of the cabinets behind his desk, able to see the office and Hyde clearly from here.

With a steady hand, Hyde reached out and placed his hand, palm and all, on the mirror, watching as his reflection copied him. He gasped and took his hand back, as if the surface had hurt him. Then he slowly put it back, and added his other hand on the opposite side of the mirror. He looked torn.

“I am Edward Hyde…” He said quietly, slurring the words a bit. “I… am… Edward Hyde. Yes. That’s… my name…”

Jekyll was unnerved, as he watched his alter ego’s bizarre behaviour. “Edward, are you already drunk?”

“Shut up!” The blond barked, abruptly cutting the quiet atmosphere that had previously been built up. Jekyll flinched, and did as he was told, lips tightly pressed together. Hyde continued to stare into the mirror.

He tilted his head one way, then the other, then tilted it in a circle, as if warming up for something. He opened his mouth, closed it, moved his jaw around, and blinked a few times. He then proceeded to make a few faces, contorting his expression in ways that a pretty boy like Dr. Jekyll likely never had in his entire life.

He frowned. “I’m Mr. Edward Hyde. I’ve been Hyde for… Oh, how long… Two years?” He rambled, taking his hands off the mirror. One hand went to his chest, and the other caressed his own face. “And for that length of time, I’ve never once questioned this change in my being. I’ve just… Been Hyde.” He monologued.

Jekyll was getting worried, now. Hyde was speaking an awful lot like he did, or used to at least, back when he would dictate his notes as he wrote them, and back when he was inspired and intrigued by his own experiments. At this moment, Edward Hyde was beginning to remind him of his former self, before all this self-experimentation had begun.

He was told to be quiet, but as he watched Hyde slowly sink to his knees, one hand burying in his blond locks and the other clutching the front of his shirt, he was compelled to break orders. He floated out from the reflection so that he could interact more physically with Hyde, and as his legs materialized and he crouched beside Hyde, he was struck with a pang of fear as he heard a sniffle come from his alter ego.

“Hyde, my God, what’s gotten into you??” He asked, reaching over to place a hand on Hyde’s upper back. The action had Hyde finally break eye contact with his reflection, and he looked at Jekyll.

His eyes were glossy, his mouth hanging open, his eyebrows knit together as if he’d just received terrible news. His in-hair hand was clenched too now, holding his hair out of his face as he heaved a shaky breath.

“I am Edward Hyde, am I not?” Hyde asked, voice coming out small and high pitched. “Right? That’s my name?” Jekyll was confused, his own brows knit in concern.

“Yes, Edward Hyde. That’s you.” He said, allowing a bit of annoyance slip into his tone. He felt much like a parent, dealing with a child on the verge of some terrible tantrum.

Hyde took another deep, trembling breath, and then smiled in that manic way he did. “Then why, pray tell, do I want to be Dr. Henry Jekyll?”

That threw Jekyll for a loop. “I-I beg your pardon? You want to… You’ve only just transformed!” He cried, his confusion escalating to anger. “Do you intend to waste your time on the floor now, after egging me for hours to finally be released?!”

“No, no!” Hyde spat back, turning his body so he could face Jekyll, still on his knees. “That isn’t what I’m saying!” His Cockney accent was slipping away from him, Jekyll realized. “You wouldn’t get it, you’ve never changed!” It unnerved him how much Hyde sounded like him.

“You’re delusional, Hyde, I change all the time. I just did, in fact!” He shot back. Hyde’s eyes widened and he laughed, high pitched and unhinged, and he glanced back to his reflection in the mirror, noting that Jekyll wasn’t there.

“No, you really don’t get it. You’ve never truly changed.” Hyde said, sounding defeated as he looked back at Jekyll. “You’re still you. You’re still Dr. Henry Jekyll. You… You didn’t become Edward Hyde.”

Jekyll blinked, some of his tension bleeding out. “You… Are you… Having an existential crisis right now?” Henry suddenly asked, as he backtracked in their one-sided conversation to see if his theory lined up with his hypothesis.

Edward faltered, and released his grip on his hair and shirt, bringing his hands to his chest to look at them. “Is that what this is??” he asked, as he blinked his eyes and tears spilled over. The sight alarmed Henry, he’d seen Edward cry from laughing or from sex, but… Never, ever had he seen Edward cry from whatever this was. His grin fell as he looked back up to Henry.

“You know,” Edward began again. “When I made that formula, I wasn’t at all certain of what was going to happen to me. I honestly… maybe thought… All my unmentionable thoughts would go away. All my impulse urges, all my nasty habits… I’m sure you can relate, after all, you’re me.” Edward chuckled at that, before his voice went quiet again. “But I never expected to change so thoroughly into, well, exactly what I was trying to rid myself of. Now… I can’t stop thinking about those things, the very things I was trying to eliminate from my mind.” Edward looked down at his lap. “I can’t stop thinking about drinking, and eating, and running, and having sex, and… Just everything. All these things I wanted to cut out, or at least cut down on… And now I’ve become the embodiment. I’ve become what I never wanted to.”

With that, Edward crumpled over on himself, becoming a ball, and he cried.

“I-I don’t wanna be Edward Hyde anymore. I wanna be Dr. Jekyll again, I wanna reverse this curse, I don’t wanna be Hyde anymore…!”

Abruptly, Henry’s whole world was shaken. He felt the anguish tear through him, as it was no doubt tearing through Edward, and he felt his eyes gloss with tears as well. He didn’t know what else to do other than sit down properly, cross legged, and rub Edward’s back in what he hoped was a soothing manner. He was desperately trying to keep his breathing even, as Edward wailed and cried over himself.

The pair stayed that way for a while, before Edward was reduced to sniffling and he was ready to come back up from his balled up form, hugging himself and sitting on his knees. He looked at Henry, and scowled a bit.

“You probably don’t care about any of this, do you?” He spat, his misery giving way to hostility. “You’ve been left unmarred by my experiment. The perfect doctor Henry Jekyll, you’re unchanged, you aren’t plagued by the evils I am.” He shook his head. “I hate you for that. I hate that I’ve turned myself into such a vile creature, but you get to remain perfect and pure.”

Henry bristled at the cruel tone of voice. “Hyde, you--”

“No! Don’t call me that!” Edward said, a flash of his hurt capturing his features for a moment. “I’m not… I don’t want to be Hyde right now. I…” He didn’t know quite what he wanted, and his mouth hung open while his eyes wandered the room characteristically, looking for his words.

Henry bit his lip, then tried again. “... Henry?”

Edward perked up and looked at Henry again, answering to the name.

Henry smiled a bit, then continued. “Henry, you don’t realize how important you are. Sure, you’re a little different now, but… That’s how it should be. That formula could have done anything to you, really, yet here you are. You’re still alive, you’re healthy, and you get to vent your intrusive thoughts and urges in a relatively healthy way. Even if you… Even if you can’t be Dr. Henry Jekyll anymore, you get to be someone entirely new. You’ve reinvented yourself. You are one of a kind, Henry Jekyll. None of your professors, none of the Lodgers, your professors, and hell, none of your family would have seen you becoming something so extraordinary, right?”

Edward contemplated the words, nodding in understanding and snorting with amusement as the words washed over him. He looked like he was understanding. “I suppose not…” His voice was still so small, so unlike the boisterous man Edward usually was. Henry decided he hated it.

“Right. But now, look at you!” He waved towards Edward’s body, making the blond look himself over. “You’ve done it! Your formula took all of your, um, undesirables, and concentrated them! Now you can go do whatever you want, and since you also look completely different, you can’t trace it back to who you used to be! That is what you love about being Edward Hyde, isn’t it?”

The smaller man frowned. “I guess… But… You know, sometimes I wish I could be you again. Be my old self again. Unchanged. Unmarred by my villainous thoughts.”

Henry thought for a moment, before an idea struck him. “You are still a scientist, aren’t you? You can perform new experiments, new tests, see if there’s a way to co-pilot this body, together. You can… You can overlap with me. You can experience what it was to be the old you, again.”

Edward’s eyes twinkled, and he sniffled again, rubbing his face with his hands. “That’s something I can try, of course… if I can just focus long enough, curse this new attention span of mine.” He grumbled. Henry laughed, and it made Edward’s face redden with a blush.

“Henry…” he addressed the blond again. “You’ve been bottling this up for quite some time, haven’t you?” He asked, and when he got a meek nod, he continued. “Do what you want tonight. If you truly want to go drink and be ‘sinful’, then that’s what you should do…” He looked over at his desk. “Or if that’s just your impulse and you don’t really want to do that, you can do something else.”

Edward followed his gaze to the desk, and he pursed his lips. He stood up on slightly shaky legs, and walked around to the desk, having a seat. He hadn’t sat in this chair in ages, it felt weird with this new smaller body. He leaned forward and quickly read the document before him, noticing it was due to be mailed out today. He took the pen in his left hand, then shook his head and moved it to the right, then didn’t hesitate to give the document the beautiful swirly signature of Dr. Henry Jekyll. When Henry stood and came to look over Edward’s shoulder, he was impressed to see the sign was near perfect.

Doing a signature in his actual dominant hand felt weird. It felt unfamiliar, now. He felt strangely excited, like this was the thing that was sinful and debaucherous. He laughed, and looked over his shoulder at Henry with a purely giddy expression.

Henry only smiled back. As Edward took another document, Henry didn’t even think about the plus that Mr. Hyde was doing the paperwork, he was only pleased that Edward seemed to be coping with whatever he was bottling up for this long.

He watched as Edward Hyde did Henry Jekyll things until he was tired and mixed the formula, and just like that, Henry was back in the driver’s seat. He observed the finished-ness of his documents, and satisfied for once with the progress, he departed from his office to get some well deserved sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> alternative title, "henry jekyll gives himself a pep talk"
> 
> wrote this in like an hour on a runaway thought, what if hyde had an existential crisis about who he was? i've always been of the firm understanding that jekyll and hyde's relationship is like a split cell; when henry jekyll took the formula for the first time, part of him stayed henry jekyll, unmarred by the formula, while another part of him was permanently changed, and this new changed henry needs a new name for his permanent disfigurement.
> 
> it is an interpretation i rarely see, save for the glass scientists! i've seen 'hyde is a brand new being, born from literally nothing', and i've seen 'hyde is just jekyll with a new body and name, he's not a new person' (which is how it is in the novella), but rarely do i see clear cut depictions of 'hyde is jekyll, but permanently altered by the formula'.
> 
> anywho! not much else to say, other than i hope you enjoyed my haphazardly written drabble!


End file.
